Only What You Take With You
by ZDBurkett
Summary: While on a diplomatic mission, 15-year-old Leia Organa's ship is ambushed by a ruthless bounty hunter, the ensuing battle sending both the senator and her assailant to a mysterious, yet familiar, swamp planet below. They soon find that they are not alone.
1. Chapter 1

The vast reaches of space seemed all but alluring to Leia Organa as she gazed dreamily through the transparisteel viewport at the dark and infinite panorama that surrounded her. Many regarded space as dull and empty, a desolate void of nothingness that existed between worlds.

Not Leia. She found it tantalizing with the whimsical promise of adventure and excitement, compelled by tales and lore she'd heard of spacers and pirates and the Jedi of old.

_Nothing more than tales_, she mused bitterly as a bright star caught her eye in the distance.

She'd often read data files and encountered HoloNet exclusives detailing the exploits of space pirates and daring smugglers, expertly maneuvering their rugged vessels in evasion of the Imperial Navy's finest starfighters, somewhere deep within the Outer Rim Territories. She'd seen holo images of the noble Jedi Knights, an order that was now all but extinct, its final traces in the galaxy ruthlessly hunted down and decimated by the Empire's sinister agents in one fell genocide.

Leia sighed, creating a blur of vapor to condense atop the transparisteel. She raised one finger and halfheartedly began to trace a cursory rendition of a nerf, a beast native to her homeworld, in the fogged viewport.

_Who am I kidding?_ she thought to herself hopelessly. _I'm never going to see any adventure_.

At the age of fifteen and already a representative of her world in the Imperial Senate, Leia seldom glimpsed an opportunity for excitement. She knew she would never encounter a space pirate or bounty hunter, cross paths with a smuggler or ace fighter pilot. And to meet a Jedi…

That would be the day. Jedi were a rare sight in the galaxy these days.

She conceded to the fact that she was acquainted with Wedge and the other X-wing pilots that served the Alliance, but she'd yet to see them in a true-to-life space battle. And besides, they were acting as nothing more than a simple escort at the moment for their current mission to Sluis Van.

Leia sulked at the notion that she would never experience any real excitement, a disappointing reality that pestered her like a persistent mynock.

And here she was again, being dragged by her adoptive father on one diplomatic mission to the next, striving to further the Alliance's cause and enlist the support of distant worlds unfriendly to the tyrannical rule of the Galactic Empire.

She glanced over her shoulder at Bail Organa, who stood conversing with an operative at a comm station. He stood next to the console, tan-skinned and adorned in an indigo tunic and Lashaa silk robe, his short beard primly trimmed.

Noticing his daughter was watching him, he turned and gave her a kind and gentle smile before returning to his busy discussion with the comm operator.

Leia returned her gaze to the viewport, her brown eyes wide with wonder as they jumped from star to shining star. She heaved another sigh. Sometimes, being heir to the Royal House of Alderaan wasn't as magnificent as the stately title caused it to sound.

Even halfway through her teens, Leia's life had become so completely absorbed in war and politics that she sometimes yearned for a normal childhood; longed to indulge in the things she knew average teenagers her age were experiencing back home on Alderaan.

_Well I'm not an average teenager, _Leia recalled dismally, snapping herself out of such preposterous ruminations, _I'm an Imperial Senator. And I'm a key figure in the Rebel Alliance. There's no time for a normal life._

Returning from her fantasies, she concentrated her mind on the task at hand.

She and her father were emissaries aboard the CR90 capital ship, _Luminescent,_ traveling on a diplomatic mission to the Sluis system, where they were to negotiate a treaty with the natives inhabiting the rocky world of Sluis Van, home to one of the galaxy's most prominent shipyards and deep-space docking facilities; two valuable assets that the Alliance could use as great tactical advantages over the Empire in this raging Galactic Civil War.

If only the Empire hadn't already seized control over the planet, along with its resident shipyards.

It seemed the Empire was expanding its sickly reach to more and more worlds each passing day, Leia mused bleakly, as though Palpatine was gathering more systems into the iron fist with which he so oppressively gripped the galaxy.

And now, Leia once again found herself a passenger on board a hulking Corellian corvette, escorted by a squadron of X-wing fighters headed by Wedge Antilles, being shuttled to the Outer Rim world of Sluis Van where her father hoped to solicit a trade agreement with the venerable khedive, leader of the serpentine Sluissi race.

Thus far, the mission had gone smoothly and according to plan. Nevertheless, Leia could not seem to overcome this inexplicable feeling, almost like a premonition, of forthcoming despair. The unnerving sensation that something was just going to go wrong.

She bit her lip apprehensively.

The girl couldn't understand why or how she was receiving this unpleasant and foreboding vibe, but it was almost as if she were one of the fabled Jedi, picking up a current in the so-called omnipotent Force to which they so zealously devoted themselves.

Whatever it was, Leia decided, she didn't like it.


	2. Chapter 2

The voluminous hangar bay resonated with the sound of the twin ion engines of Imperial TIE starfighters revving up for flight as the gargantuan _Imperial_-class Star Destroyer _Desolator _emerged from hyperspace in an accelerated blur of lightspeed. The TIEs, each consisting of an eyeball-shaped command pod flanked by two oversized radiator panels fashioned into solar array wings, were suspended in meticulously ordered rows from cycling racks above the recently-polished deck.

From inside the cockpit of his modified _Manta_-class assault starfighter, Ozim Kryon watched as one by one, the surrounding TIEs disengaged from the cycling racks after their black-clad pilots clambered into their designated fighters and took the helm by means of a series of overhead gantries.

Fully prepped for liftoff and repulsors thrumming, the fleet deployed into the Outer Rim Sluis Sector in a swarming phalanx of eager fighters, into the cold confines of realspace.

Kryon felt the sweeping darkness of space, familiar yet entrancing as always, envelope him from within his fighter's canopy as he gripped the control joystick, swerving the assault vehicle at the vanguard of an orderly formation of Imperial TIEs.

A smug grin crept like a vile Urnsor'is across the humanoid's pallid face as he entered coordinates into his fighter's navcomputer. If the data his employer had provided proved to be accurate, the fleet should intercept the Rebel CR90 blockade runner _Luminescent _at 1.5 parsecsinto the industrial Sluis system, where the throng of TIEs would overwhelmingly ambush and cripple the capital ship, thus enabling Kryon to snare his mark.

_"The number of casualties is inconsequential to me,"_ the Sith Lord had voiced between sonorous breaths from within his foreboding, black visor. _"See to it that the traitor finds her way into my charge, bounty hunter."_

Kryon haughtily suppressed a scoff, recalling his encounter with Darth Vader and the explicit and chilling orders he had given him aboard the dark lord's flagship, the _Exactor_. However, contrary to galaxy-wide belief, Kryon hadn't found the Sith nearly as terrifying and intimidating as half the citizens comprising the galactic population so fearfully professed.

If anything, Vader had been lumbering and awkward in his cumbersome life-support suit, heavily equipped with his various breathing apparatuses, excessive filters, and disproportional helmet; not the daunting and menacing figure of whom he had heard rumors in the smoke-filled corners of Tatooine or Nal Hutta's shadiest cantinas. It was generally known throughout the galaxy that the notorious Ozim Kryon, master assassin and part-time bounty hunter, knew little of fear.

Stifling a chuckle, Kryon mused that his quarry scarcely warranted the 50 thousand credits he was being offered in return for her capture.

_A mere girl_, he jeered disgustedly. She was hardly worth his time.

No matter, he ultimately decided. He considered the delectable soup that could potentially be sampled from her Rebel counterparts, a tantalizing thought that greatly whet his unquenchable palate. That appetizing possibility alone was well worth the bounty. It had been too long since he'd last indulged in the savory yet grotesque meal known to his people.

A member of the ancient Anzati race, Kryon hailed from a long legacy of assassins, a profession for which his species was legendary. His ruthless line of work had taken him to all corners of the galaxy, from Gamorr to Nar Shaada. Having been employed by such renowned crime syndicates as the Hutts and Black Sun, he was known for taking whatever measures necessary to ensnare his target, dead or alive.

Thus, it was only a matter of time before the Galactic Empire recognized him for his merciless reputation and infamous record in the criminal underworld and proceeded to employ his skill in its effort against the threat posed by the growing rebellion.

Kryon relaxed his jaw muscles slightly, allowing twin coiled proboscises to unravel from cheek pockets in either side of his sallow face where they had been concealed. The pair of tentacle-like organs, the signature characteristic of the Anzati, served a variety of functions but most were aware of their sickening, primary purpose.

The sinuous tendrils that dangled limply from Kryon's blood-curdling visage were essential to the repugnant process that constituted the Anzati way of feeding. In order for an Anzat to feast, one must insert his or her twisting proboscises through the victim's nostrils and into the cranium, draining and savoring the gelid mucoid substance found in the sentient brain.

Known more commonly to the race simply as _soup_, the viscous cranial fluid consumed by the Anzati was considered a delicacy among the ancient people, and many devoted entire lifetimes solely to hunting suitable vessels from which to procure their insidious meals. Once a young Anzat first acquired a taste for the gelatinous soup, it was not unusual for the craving to quickly grow to an addiction beyond control, and escalate to a crazed and lustful hunger unable to be satiated.

Removing his grip from the throttle momentarily, Kryon ran his hand through his mane of tangled, dark hair. His twin tentacles twitched slightly, almost as if in anticipation at the notion of feasting on the luscious brain mucous of another sentient being.

As the fleet drew nearer to the former Confederate planet of Sluis Van, a faint image became detectable on his _Manta_'s radar glanced over his shoulder through the canopy viewport and saw the Star Destroyer fading smaller into the distance beyond a sea of TIE fighters, still locked in rigid formation.

Ozim Kryon's eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the flashing radar image that slowly dilated in correspondence as the fleet closed in. A subtle smirk crossed his grim profile.


End file.
